We take a look at the innovative routes enabling more people to realise their dream of living in a tailor-made home – and explore some impressive schemes

Kimbolton in Herefordshire is a scheme of four bespoke houses (two cottages, two barns) on a redundant poultry site just outside a village settlement. Border Oak (www. borderoak.co.uk) purchased the site, secured planning and installed the infrastructure. Each client now enjoys a house built to their specifi cation by Border Oak, which will also take care of all shared landscaping

Building from scratch is the best way to get the home you need, but it’s not without challenges. Finding good land, raising finance and winning planning all regularly come up as major hurdles for budding self builders. They’re not insurmountable, of course, but they can add cost and delay to your project.

So, wouldn’t it be lovely if there were a way to make things a little easier to manage? Well, you’re in luck – there is! In fact, several new routes have sprung up in recent years that promise all the choice, control and quality you’d expect when creating your own home – but without some of the stresses associated with conventional self building.

Grouped under the moniker ‘custom build’, these routes range from individual serviced, shovel-ready plots through to large-scale developments where every home is bespoke. What all of them have in common is that a lot of the initial setup (such as planning permission and arranging utilities) are coordinated by an experienced provider, who may well offer follow-on services, too. Here’s a quick look at the main types of custom build opportunity out there: